“Renaissance”, an animated feature from France

Here’s the most intriguing 2006 animated film I’ve heard about. Actually, it’s the only intriguing 2006 film I’ve heard about, but that’s another story. RENAISSANCE is a French feature directed by Christian Volckman that’s scheduled for release in March 2006. It looks to be in a noirish sci-fi vein and is entirely in black-and-white. I’m assuming March is the French release date, but a quick search on Google reveals that the North American distributor is (believe it or not) Disney so perhaps we’ll be seeing this film soon in the states. I’d never heard of Christian Volckman, but apparently he directed a well received short film in the late-90s called MAAZ. There’s a bit more about him and a clip from MAAZ posted at AWN.

Here’s the big question mark. The film’s character animation was created using motion capture techniques. Fortunately, unlike some awful uses of mo-cap, like Robert Zemeckis’s performance capture characters in THE POLAR EXPRESS, the production design here seems to be sufficiently stylized enough to mask the look of the technology. It’s a little difficult to tell from such a small sampling of animation, but there’s reason to be hopeful. There’s also some more clips and information about the film posted at Twitch. (Thanks, Gérald Guerlais)